Document Type
Article
Author ORCID Identifier
Cory Goates https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7568-1280
Doug Hunsaker https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8106-7466
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Aerospace
Volume
11
Issue
12
Publisher
MDPI AG
Publication Date
12-11-2024
Journal Article Version
Version of Record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
First Page
1
Last Page
25
Abstract
For problems with very fine surface meshes, typically the most time-consuming step of a boundary element method (BEM, also called a panel method) is solving the final linear system of equations. Many have already studied how to efficiently solve the dense, asymmetric systems which arise in elliptic BEMs. However, this has not been studied for a supersonic aerodynamic BEM, for which the governing PDE is hyperbolic. Due to this hyperbolic character, the matrix equation which arises from a supersonic BEM has a large number of identically zero elements. But the resulting linear system of equations is also not sparse in the standard sense. Hence, the efficient solution of the linear system of equations arising in a supersonic BEM is here considered. A novel sorting algorithm is developed whereby the non-zero elements may be arranged into a useful structure with minimal cost. A novel direct solution method is developed here based on fast Givens rotations and the QR decomposition. This novel solver leverages the unique matrix structure to solve the supersonic system of equations more quickly than traditional direct methods. This novel method is then compared to other direct and iterative matrix solvers and is shown to be more robust than iterative solvers and more efficient than other direct solvers, with a computational time complexity of approximately O(N2.5).
Recommended Citation
Goates, C.; Hunsaker, D. A Novel, Direct Matrix Solver for Supersonic Boundary Element Method Systems. Aerospace 2024, 11, 1018. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace11121018